Review: Evidence Based Practice of Surgical Safety Checklists
Surgical Safety Checklists and Patient Safety
JoAnna L. McLeod
Washington State University
Abstract
Patients are at heightened risk of complications while undergoing surgery. The use of a checklist for surgical safety has been utilized to lower these rates of complications. This paper was developed to respond to the question: When health care professionals implement a surgical safety checklist, compared to regular procedure without use of a checklist, do incidence of complications in patients decrease during hospital stay? CINAHL, Pub Med, and the Cochrane Library databases were searched using keywords: checklist, patient safety, surgery, adverse events, and complications for credible publications and retrieved five relevant articles. One out of the five publications is a systematic review and the other four are cohort studies. Four out of the five included studies concluded that implementation of the surgical safety checklist contributed to significant decrease in the rate of patient complications. One studied was inconclusive and concluded that further research needed to be done to better assess the effectiveness of safety checklists. Research supplied sufficient evidence of lowered complications that supports the use of the surgical safety checklist within hospital surgical units. Best practice would be to implement the surgical safety checklist into surgical units. The author recommends that mandating surgery teams to complete simulation training with educational proficiency of the checklist to implement the checklist into best practice.
Surgical Safety Checklists and Patient Safety
Patients undergoing surgical procedures are at a heightened risk for complications and death, although it is unclear whether these risks can be modified with the surgical safety checklist. The purpose of this paper was to respond in part to the question: When health care professionals implement a surgical safety checklist, compared to regular procedure without use of a
JoAnna L. McLeod
Washington State University
Abstract
Patients are at heightened risk of complications while undergoing surgery. The use of a checklist for surgical safety has been utilized to lower these rates of complications. This paper was developed to respond to the question: When health care professionals implement a surgical safety checklist, compared to regular procedure without use of a checklist, do incidence of complications in patients decrease during hospital stay? CINAHL, Pub Med, and the Cochrane Library databases were searched using keywords: checklist, patient safety, surgery, adverse events, and complications for credible publications and retrieved five relevant articles. One out of the five publications is a systematic review and the other four are cohort studies. Four out of the five included studies concluded that implementation of the surgical safety checklist contributed to significant decrease in the rate of patient complications. One studied was inconclusive and concluded that further research needed to be done to better assess the effectiveness of safety checklists. Research supplied sufficient evidence of lowered complications that supports the use of the surgical safety checklist within hospital surgical units. Best practice would be to implement the surgical safety checklist into surgical units. The author recommends that mandating surgery teams to complete simulation training with educational proficiency of the checklist to implement the checklist into best practice.
Surgical Safety Checklists and Patient Safety
Patients undergoing surgical procedures are at a heightened risk for complications and death, although it is unclear whether these risks can be modified with the surgical safety checklist. The purpose of this paper was to respond in part to the question: When health care professionals implement a surgical safety checklist, compared to regular procedure without use of a
References: Haynes, A.B., Weiser, T.G., Berry, W.R., Lipsitz, S.R., Breizat, A.S., Dellinger, E.P., … Gawande, A.A. (2009). A surgical safety checklist to reduce morbidity and mortality in a global population. The New England Journal of Medicine, 360(5), 491-499. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa0810119 Ko, H.C.H., Turner, T.J., & Finnigan, M.A. (2011). Systematic review of safety checklists for use by medical care teams in acute hospital settings - limited evidence of effectiveness. BioMed Central Health Services Research, 11(211), 1-9. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-11-211 Panesar, S.S., Noble, D.J., Mirza, S.B., Patel, B., Mann, B., Emerton, M., ... Bhandari, M. (2011). Can the surgical checklist reduce the risk of wrong site surgery in orthopaedics?--can the checklist help? Supporting evidence from analysis of a national patient incident reporting system. Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research, 6(18), 1-7. doi:10.1186/1749-799X-6-18 Weiser, T.G., Haynes, A.B., Dziekan, G., Berry, W.R., Lipsitz, S.R., & Gawande, A.A. (2010). Effect of a 19-item surgical safety checklist during urgent operations in a global patient population. Annals of Surgery, 251(5), 976-980. doi: 10.1097/SLA.0b013e3181d970e3 Zegers, M., de Bruijne, M.C., de Keizer, B., Merten, H., Groenewegen, P.P., van der Wal, G., and Wagner, C. (2011). The incidence, root-causes, and outcomes of adverse events in surgical units: implication for potential prevention strategies. Patient Safety in Surgery, 5(13), 1-11. doi:10.1186/1754-9493-5-13